Friday, January 28, 2011

Some of you know that my partner, Sarah, and I have written a memoir called Times Two. It's due out April 5, 2011 through Free Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster). Some of you don't know we've written a book...but actually you do now unless you didn't read the first line of this blog. The book is about our simultaneous pregnancies (yes, we got pregnant on the exact same day), the trials and tribulations that followed (being exactly the same pregnant with your person), and the subsequent births of our delicious "twiblings," Thomas & Kate.

Our friends at Free Press have very graciously donated 10 copies of Times Two to Antigone Rising's 23 Red Kickstarter promotion. Sarah and I will autograph the copies and they will ship out on March 3rd directly to your doorstep. That's 1 full month before it will be in bookstores. So if you're dying to know what I looked like in the delivery room and can't wait until April 5th, there's a picture in the photo well, not nearly as graphic as you've allowed your imagination to roam. But still. It is me. In the delivery room. Trying to figure out how on earth a baby is supposed to fit out of...well, read the book.

So, if you'd like 1 of 10 advanced/autographed copies of Times Two, please go to our Kickstarter.com page and pledge for it. If you've already pledged on something else, you can increase your current pledge amount, and then send us an email telling us what you've done. Just be sure to select the book as your new selected reward, with your combined pledge amount.

Kristen Henderson & Sarah Ellis have written a book so disarmingly funny, touching and readable, that you almost forget it is about all the important issues of our time...women's rights, civil rights, and family rights. The journey of Kristen and her partner, Sarah, in their quest to have a child, seems like Nora Ephron's idea of a script...hilarious at times, frustrating, maddening and, finally, a Hollywood style happy ending. This book captures the political zeitgeist of all the modern families in the country, and shows that, whatever your beliefs and affiliations, the most important component in the make-up of a family is love.Cherie Currie
Lead singer of The Runaways
author of "Neon Angel"

Kristen and Sarah have done two things with their new book. First, they’ve shown themselves to be two powerful writers who are so close to each other that they sometimes feel as if they write in one voice. Secondly, and more importantly, they’ve shown that love comes from two people wanting, for reasons they don’t control, to meld their lives together. At the end you find yourself not at the end of a story, but at the beginning of a wonderful life.

Rob Thomas
Grammy award winning songwriter/songwriter

Kristen and Sarah somehow make a "slice of life" story of love, career and family into an entertaining page turner. We are reminded that the magic moments of life are found in the day to day, ordinary struggles of overcoming obstacles as well as in the fulfillment of our dreams. This book helps to carry a movement, a shift in paradigm, that has been a long time coming. I hope Times Two reaches a wide and varied audience of readers so that this truth becomes our new norm: society needs healthy, loving, functioning families regardless of how they are made or how they look.

Kathy Valentine
Songwriter and Bassist of the pop/punk band The Go-Go's
Tweeting her own memoir 180 characters at a time at: @kvmemoir

What was it Tolstoy said? Happy families are all alike? This book proves the great Russian writer was absolutely wrong. Happy families come in all varieties. This funny and touching book is Exhibit A.

A.J. Jacobs, bestselling author of My Life as an Experiment and The Year of Living Biblically

This is a tender and touching story of two talented women falling in love and forming a beautifully unconventional family. Readers will be fascinated by their simultaneous pregnancies and dual journeys into motherhood. Times Two offers wonderful perspectives on the joys and challenges of contemporary lesbian life.

Nanette Gartrell, MD My Answer is NO…if that's okay with you: How Women Can Say No With ConfidencePrincipal Investigator, US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study

Monday, January 24, 2011

I can be honest here, right? This is my blog, afterall. Not many things are mine anymore. I live with 2 - two year olds and there is an excessive amount of "mine" speak in my house. For the record, nothing is mine. Except for this blog. When they nap.

So let's get this blog out, shall we?

The band is making a brand new CD. We started recording it before the new year. And we realized quickly that, well, one of the perks of being signed to a major label was that they gave us money to do things. like. record.

But here we are now in a very different music industry and we're going it on our own. We love the autonomy. But we do need help to get this CD recorded properly. And then beyond that, we need to manufacture and promote the thing.

So we're asking fans to donate money to our project. We launched a campaign on Kickstarter.com. And now I spend my days hitting the refresh button hoping we reach our goal. Because if we don't reach our goal, we don't get one single dime that people have pledged. And since I can be completely honest here on my very personal blog, I can tell you that our goal of $20K might seem like a lot of money. And it IS a lot of money. I don't have it sitting around in my bank account, that's for sure. But when you're recording and manufacturing and promoting a CD, $20K disappears in about 2 seconds.

So we're figuring out ways to be creative. And we're figuring out ways to get this CD done bare bones. We've always done that, even when we were signed to a major label. And we're offering fun, creative (we think) rewards to our fans who back our project.

Allow me to be candid here for a moment, would you? My band has been through a lot. When we almost broke up in 2008 I was devastated, and fortunately pregnant so I couldn't sink into an ocean of depression (cue violins, and no, the violins are not coming out of the Kickstarter budget). I never in a million years thought we'd figure out a way to regroup successfully. And I'm sure most of you didn't think we could either. And some of you have no idea what I'm even talking about, so never mind.

But we're coming back stronger than ever. We've written some amazing songs that I'm really proud of. Some of them are the best songs I've ever written (at least according to me). It would just be so great to be able to record a CD and PUT IT OUT THERE!

I thought the babies would cure my addiction to Antigone Rising, but I was completely wrong. Since they've been born, all I want to do is teach them to never ever give up on their dreams. Melodrama duly noted.

If the babies don't kill me first, this band certainly will...(cries from across the hall indicate this blog is done).
#Hendo

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Just before my alarm went off at 5:45am yesterday morning, I opened my eyes. I took a few seconds to focus on the cable box clock. It said 5:42am. I beat my alarm clock. The joys of being a mother...

I rolled over, turned my alarm off and texted Jude to see if she and Cathy were running on time (never...Sibby, not Jude).
Kristen's text: "U on time?"
Jude's text back: "Happy Birthday"

For years, Jude had no idea how to send text messages, so she'd just use the default/preset messages her phone gave her. The "Happy Birthday" message became synonymous with the word "yes."

I couldn't believe it. Cathy and Jude were really going to be to my house by 6am? Ugh.

I got up...went about my business...dragged my luggage down the steps...saw Mikey P. walking Artie outside in the pitch blackness of the morning...and waited....then I started to wonder....we did say 6am pickup, didn't we? I'm sure that's what the itinerary said...but ever since my passport debacle two days earlier, I started second guessing everything I thought I once knew.

Our manager, Julie, sent out about 100 email remdinders to the band ever since we got booked to be on The Rock Boat XI last June.

Julie's emails: "you will need your passports for the boat. be sure they're up to date and packed with you. we don't know where the boat is going yet and you will need it to board."

Julie sent that message once a month for the first 3 months, then once a week, and about once a day since mid - December.

So on Saturday...New Year's Day...2 days before I'd be climbing into the van at 6am to drive to Florida...I decide to look for my passport. During the babies nap, Sarah pulled it out of the filing cabinet and tossed it at me while I sat at my desk.